Jan Smuts

A Biography

F. S. Crafford

• Publisher: Borodino Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781787208537
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

'A just biography of an important figure—political philosopher, soldier in three wars, scientist, statesman—Jan Smuts, who has played a long and decisive role in the formation and consolidation of South Africa. Masterful, energetic, intolerant, often highhanded, Smuts has never been a popular leader, but never once did he deviate from his conception of a united South Africa within the British Empire. Before his Premiership and after, he was to fight steadily against the opposition, the Nationalists, who demanded complete severance from Britain. Other problems of the Indians, of labor rebellion, of industrial unrest, objectively presented. During the First World War, his ruthless leadership in action in East Africa; his important part in world affairs as representative in the British War Cabinet; and later his plan for the League of Nations. He fell from power in 1924, as the anti-British Hertzog came in; he was recalled at 70 to head his country at war for the third time, which he has accomplished with equal severity and decisiveness.'Sound, factual biography…' (Kirkus)

SECTION I

1

ONE FINE MORNING in the year 1652 three stately ships sailed into Table Bay and cast anchor a few yards from where Table Mountain sloped gently from the sea and then rose suddenly into the sky, a sheer three thousand feet of forbidding sandstone. The vessels were the Dromedaris, the Reiger, and the Goede Hoop, belonging to the Dutch East India Company and carrying a small band of Dutch settlers to the land of Good Hope, there to establish a halfway station between Holland and the Dutch East Indies. In charge of these people was a doctor, Jan van Riebeeck, who held the rank of commander and was the first of a long line of commanders and governors to rule the fair and sunny land which stretched northward from the once dreaded Cape of Storms.

In 1688, in consequence of religious persecution in their motherland—particularly after the repeal of the Edict of Nantes—one hundred and eighty French Huguenots fled from France and sought refuge in this new country.

They were outnumbered by the Dutch and, within a few generations, lost their language and their race identity through complete absorption. From that fusion of blood there sprang a new nation—a sturdy race of Afrikaners possessing the predominating characteristics of their Dutch and Huguenot forebears and regarding the Cape as their homeland and the sole object of their patriotism. The language they spoke was the High Dutch of the seventeenth century, which evolved along lines of its own in a country remote from Holland, was subjected to various external influences—principally those of slaves coming from the East—and in the course of time developed into the Afrikaans language, which is spoken by the majority of Europeans in South Africa today.

In and around Cape Town the colonists built their homes—large, white houses with spacious, airy rooms containing rafters and floors of yellow wood, enormously thick clay walls, fine gables in the old Dutch style, wide stoeps, and thatched roofs. And round about their homesteads they planted many oaks and great vineyards, and they cultivated the fields and reared cattle. The pleasant Land of Good Hope fulfilled the promise of its name and is today the most beautiful region in all South Africa, noted for its ancient oaks, its great vineyards, its orchards, its old Dutch houses, which still grace the countryside, and all the natural beauty with which it has been profusely endowed.

The colonists were a hard-working and thrifty people but at the same time they were an independent, freedom-loving race of pioneers, inclined, on occasion, to be headstrong and intolerant of interference.

In 1806 the Cape, after a temporary occupation from 1795 to 1803, fell permanently into the hands of the British. About 25,000 whites and 26,000 slaves lived there at the time, occupying approximately 150,000 square miles of territory.

The Dutch burghers could not at first complain of their treatment at the hands of their new rulers, but there was a distinct change of front on the part of the British authorities immediately after the Treaty of Vienna of 1815 had finally confirmed Britain’s claims to the conquered territory.

In quick succession the majority of their time-honoured rights and privileges were taken from the burghers. No longer were they allowed to serve on juries; the Burgher Senate was abolished; so were the Landdrosts and Heemrade (magistrates and local councils), who had formerly been chosen from the ranks of the burghers and had constituted the judiciary in all the outlying districts. English became the sole official language in spite of the fact that over 80 per cent of the people spoke only Dutch.

The Boers, as the burghers came to be known (“Boer” means farmer), had many other grievances: they complained about the weakness of the Administration’s native policy on the frontiers where, despite frequent murderous inroads made upon Boer territory by native thieves and murderers, effective measures were never taken to check these depredations; they were deeply incensed at the sudden emancipation of slaves and particularly by the way in which the payment of compensation was effected; but nothing, probably, angered them more than did the unhappy events at Slagtersnek in the years 1815 and 1816. These constitute a tale both interesting and tragic.

Fourteen Hottentot soldiers in charge of a man Rousseau, a lieutenant, went, at the end of 1815, to arrest a burgher, Frederik Bezuidenhout by name, living in the Eastern Province of the Cape Colony. As the men marched up, Bezuidenhout fled to a cave where he was shot by one of the Hottentots, while resisting arrest. A tremendous uproar resulted. Martial law was proclaimed, and a number of Boers were arrested. Seventeen of them were either fined heavily or sentenced to banishment, while five were condemned to death. A large gibbet was hastily erected at Andrew’s Post, and the condemned men were taken there on March 9, 1816. They stood in a row beneath the gallows tree and were allowed to sing a last hymn. Surrounding them were three hundred soldiers on guard, and nearby stood sixteen of their burgher comrades whom the authorities had ordered “to witness the execution.” The hangman placed nooses round the necks of the doomed men and at a given signal knocked aside the “drop.” Only one man stayed aloft. The rest fell to the ground with broken ropes around their necks and then rose uncertainly to their feet. The bystanders, deeply moved and with tears streaming down their cheeks, begged Cuyler and Stockenström, the government’s representatives, to spare the lives of the survivors. But these agents had no authority but to carry out the executions. There were no spare ropes; so the defective ones were knotted together, and eventually the men were hanged. It was a gruesome spectacle and an event filled with future evil for South Africa. The Boers have never forgotten or forgiven Slagtersnek (Butcher’s Neck), and to this day it throws its shadow across the South African scene.

At length, driven on by the urge for freedom which they had inherited from their fathers, large numbers of Boers rounded up their cattle, packed their most cherished possessions in their great, hooded wagons, inspanned their teams of oxen, and with their families trekked away from British rule into the vast hinterland of Southern Africa. The Great Trek—famous in South African history—had begun. It was a slow and arduous process, and one fraught with great danger. For many months the unwieldy wagons lumbered along, travelling where white man had never been before, crossing large rivers and great mountain ranges, and traversing many hundreds of miles of trackless country.

Scores of these Voortrekkers (pioneers) fell by the wayside: some died of hunger, thirst, and disease; wild animals accounted for others; and in the fearsome hours of the early dawn savage Bantu tribes slew many in their sleep with club and assegai, and dashed out the brains of infants against the wagon wheels. Sometimes entire families were wiped out.

The Zulu impis of Dingaan the Treacherous killed many of the Boers, including Piet Retief, one of their leaders. After grievous losses the Boers organized a punitive expedition. On the banks of a river they prepared to meet the enemy, drawing their wagons in a circle, end to end, to form the “laager” fortress famous in South African warfare. In a solemn invocation of Divine assistance before the battle the Boers vowed that if victory was vouchsafed to them they would in thanksgiving build a place of worship and commemorate the day in the Lord’s name. Though greatly outnumbered by the fearless savages, they inflicted a shattering defeat, and the river ran red with the blood of Dingaan’s warriors. They called it Blood River and their day of victory, December 16, is “Dingaan’s Day” in South Africa, a public holiday observed by many as a day of worship. The church they built where the city Pietermaritzburg, capital of Natal, stands today.

The Voortrekkers founded the village of Weenen (the place of weeping) at the scene of one of the massacres. Several other hamlets sprang up, and naming the country Natalia, the Boers declared for themselves a republic. But the British came in from the sea and claimed the land, which then became a British colony. The Boers placed their goods and chattels in their wagons once again and trekked slowly back across the mighty Mountains of the Dragons, the highest in South Africa, and established two republics—one north of the Orange and the other north of the Vaal—which they called, respectively, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal.

Then came Sir Harry Smith an 1849 and annexed the Orange Free State on behalf of Great Britain and gave it a new name. But at the Sand River Convention of 1852 and the Bloemfontein Convention of 1854 the British Government formally recognized the independence of the two Boer republics.

In 1870, however, large deposits of diamonds were discovered in the Western Free State and, according to James Anthony Froude, “there was a notion that the finest diamond mine in the world should not be lost to the British Empire.” So Great Britain annexed the diamond fields, and from every part of the empire men came to seek their fortunes. Within a few years the discovery of diamonds was to change substantially the economic and political life of South Africa, and the subsequent discovery of gold would revolutionize it completely.

It was a remarkable year—this year of 1870: the nations of Europe were getting ready for the “scramble for Africa”; the Americans were feeling the after effects of a bloody civil war; and the Prussian war machine, destined to become the scourge of Europe when finally it was perfected, was ruthlessly smashing and blasting its way through France. On May 24 of that year (the date on which Queen Victoria celebrated her birthday in the thirty-third year of her reign) the wife of Jacobus Abraham Smuts gave birth to a son on the farm Bovenplaats near the hamlet of Riebeek West in the Cape Colony.

2

THE BOY was named Jan Christiaan. A sickly, rickety child he was from early infancy, thin and pallid. Until his twelfth year he had no schooling, but remained at home on the farm, an unprepossessing lad showing no signs of promise. “He is a poor, unhealthy youngster,” said his father, “a queer fellow without much intelligence. It is best that he remain at home.” His parents felt sorry for Jannie and looked pityingly at him as he wandered about the farm or looked after the cattle and sheep, and tended the pigs and the poultry. His interests were the changing seasons and other natural phenomena. He lived close to the soil among the farm animals and the coloured workmen. And he loved the green fields in the spring and the golden-brown harvests in summer. He was as yet unable to read or write, but he would listen for hours to the wonderful tales told him by his friend, Old Adam, the wrinkled old Hottentot shepherd, as they sat by a fire in the open.

On Sundays Jacobus Smuts and his wife used to attend services in the church at Riebeek West. They were a devout couple. Frequently they took Jannie along. For the quiet boy these visits to the village were always a high adventure.

Riebeek West lay in the Swartland (the Black Country) several miles north of the larger town of Malmesbury, not very far from Cape Town. It was a pleasant hamlet, with streams of clear water and vineyards and orchards nestling against the lower slopes of an isolated mountain. North and west of it, as far as the eye could see, were fields of grain in season, for the Swartland was the granary of the Cape. The country was open towards the west with here and there a hill or a low mountain, the undulating plains sweeping right up to the Atlantic seaboard. Also to the east lay level land, stretching a score of miles to the foot of the high Drakenstein range with its great peaks and its forbidding buttresses, the first great barrier encountered by the traveller going up to the Free State and the Transvaal.

A few years after Jannie’s birth the family left Bovenplaats and settled on the farm Klipfontein, about twelve miles from the village. The new farm had great cornfields but few fruit trees and no vineyards. The farmhouse was a thatched building with a stoep and neat red shutters. In the distance one could see the Berg River, a mere trickle of water in the hot and dusty summer but a swiftly flowing brown torrent when the heavy winter rains fell on the Drakenstein Mountains and in the Valley of the Huguenots. Frequently it overflowed its banks and carried away much soil from the surrounding fields as it wended its turbulent way to St. Helena Bay, which lies some miles north of the historic Bay of Saldanha, calling place of the early sea voyagers.

Jacobus Smuts was a heavily built, healthy, and hearty son of the soil whose forebears had come from Holland. An able, hard-working, honest farmer, he was respected by all who knew him, and his advice was frequently sought by relatives and friends from the surrounding farms, for he was a man of sound practical judgment. Interested in public affairs, he served on numerous public bodies and for many years represented Malmesbury in the old Cape Legislative Assembly. He belonged to the Afrikaner Bond party, the first political organization to voice the sentiments of the Dutch-speaking element of the Cape, but was never a politician of any distinction, noted in the House for his rustic geniality and long silences rather than for anything else.

His wife, known by all as Tante (Aunt) Cato, was a sister of the Reverend Bodewyn de Vries, the first Dutch Reformed minister to accept a call to Riebeek West, where he remained for twenty-one years. Tante Cato was a sharp-witted woman, surprisingly quick at repartee and apt observation. Outspoken by nature, she often added a farmyard flavour to her sharp wit. She was very emotional, had a particularly vivid imagination and a highly impressionable nature, being easily moved to tears or laughter and, in conversation, subject to alternate moods of hilarity and seriousness. She could easily create an imaginary world of her own and make other people live in it too. This gift she imparted in full measure to her son Jannie. She had been to school in Cape Town for a few years and had some knowledge of French and music. In her veins ran a mixture of French and Dutch blood.

When Jannie was twelve years old his elder brother, Michiel, fell ill with typhoid and died. The parents then decided to send their second boy to Riebeek West to be educated, so that, if possible, he might become a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, a calling for which their eldest son had been destined. The prospect of going to school held no attractions for Jannie, but he had no voice in the matter.

Michiel had boarded and lodged with the Malan family who lived on the beautiful old farm Allesverloren which adjoined the village, but Jannie went to the school hostel, Die Ark, run by Mr. T. C. Stofberg, the schoolmaster. The lad was shy and reserved and obviously unhappy in his new surroundings. He longed intensel...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• DEDICATION
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• PREFACE
• FOREWORD
• ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS
• SECTION I
• SECTION II
• SECTION III
• SECTION IV
• SECTION V
• SECTION VI
• SECTION VII
• SECTION VIII
• THE OFFENSIVE PHASE
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER